It has now emerged the government has been mining data from the internet as well as phone data from Verizon. Leaked documents appear to show that a government spying program, called Prism, has been in place for years. Prism has allegedly allowed access to the the US and UK security services to the servers of the biggest internet companies: Google, Apple, Skype, Microsoft, YouTube, and Facebook.

However the internet companies in question have denied the claims. Google has issued a statement, “We have not joined any program that would give the U.S. government – or any other government – direct access to our servers.

“Indeed, the U.S. government does not have direct access or a “back door” to the information stored in our data centres. We had not heard of a program called PRISM until yesterday.

“Any suggestion that Google is disclosing information about our users’ Internet activity on such a scale is completely false.

“We provide user data to governments only in accordance with the law. Our legal team reviews each and every request, and frequently pushes back when requests are overly broad or don’t follow the correct process.

“Press reports that suggest that Google is providing open-ended access to our users’ data are false, period.”

Facebook and Apple have also denied knowledge of the Prism program.

Read More: The Telegraph